“They’re flowers, Nadia. They grow back. You own the place, so clean it yourself.”
Then she hung up.
PART 2
Normally, Zac would have tried to calm everyone down. This time, he looked at the ruined garden and asked, “What do you need?”
“Grandma’s garden map.”
He brought me a long cardboard tube from the study.
Inside was Grandma’s hand-drawn plan of the entire garden. Every flower bed had a number. Beside each number, she had written the plant, the date, and the memory connected to it.
Peonies — my first summer.
Lavender — the year she recovered.
Daisies — my first recital.
Roses — her anniversary.
Zac and I spent the afternoon comparing the ruined beds with her map. When we finished, we identified exactly 286 destroyed or uprooted plants.
That number gave me an idea.
Using Grandma’s old seed box, I prepared 286 numbered packets containing seeds, bulbs, cuttings, or replacement roots for everything Kelsey had ruined.
At the bottom, I placed a laminated copy of Grandma’s map. On top, I attached a plaque:
